Vmug

Ah, VMworld Wednesday, the show is in full swing. Get past the second morning keynote and the messaging will slowly change to focus on the VMworld Customer Appreciation Party with the Kaiser Chiefs playing.
Keynote? The VMTN Community area was once again my first destination of the day, to get settled before the keynote started. However, a conversation with a bunch of the people who had also gathered there meant that during the keynote itself, I wrote 2 words, neither of them in this post.

So the day has come, the great and the good of the VMware community are all gathered in Barcelona for another VMworld Europe and as much as there’s been a whole bunch of chat, beers, sessions, training, exams and catching up going on (including PEX and TAM Day), the keynote marks the transition from all the “preliminaries” to the actual show proper. More on that soon, but first, the vBreakfast!

We’re now a mere week away from the VMUG UK UserCon on 17th November, but there is still time toregister ahead the day itself. You should also remember that you can simply turn up on the day, as always. We’ll be happy to see you either way. If you want to come to the vCurry the night before (7PM - 9PM, in the Premier Suite at the Motorcycle Museum) then it’s best to pre-register for that so we know how many people want feeding.

In just a couple of weeks, I’ll be attending my fourth UK VMUG UserCon, which is set to be the biggest VMUG event in the UK this year. As usual, the UserCon is being held at the National Motorcycle Museum, close to the NEC and Birmingham Airport. This years date for the diary is Thursday 17th November. With the demise of the physical vForum event, this should be the biggest VMware related gathering in the UK this year.

The last day of the show is always the quietest day. Some people are travelling home early, there’s less sessions around, certainly no parties after hours to plan for, the solutions exchange gets torn down and basically, everyone’s knackered.
My Thursday was relatively gentle, as a reflection of all of the above. I did have a few sessions booked, but in the end, I ducked most of them, other than the mandatory TAM session, as everything is available online afterwards and there were still some vendors to see, some conversations to have, some people to catch up with, generally some time to be sociable.

AKA TAM day 2 for me, I’d got so many TAM sessions planned that it was going to prove difficult to keep the step average up!
TAM 3842 – VMware Cloud on AWS Wednesday morning saw me wake up to discover a session which I did not have on my calendar when I planned my sessions, although I was rather pleased to see it there, given that it was about #VMConAWS.

This post will focus on the better part of the VMworld Tuesday, from both a time and an enjoyment perspective. Things didn’t start too well, I’d not gone to bed too late, but it seemed that I was party to Barcelona’s loudest ever relationship breakup which took place outside my window at about 4.30 AM, which meant that I failed to get to the vBreakfast for 7AM (sorry Fred, I definitely will make it one year!

Kicking off the conference in the best way possible is attendance at TAM day (or Partner day if that’s your thing). TAM day is a relatively structured day with a number of sessions and of course, that access to the other parts of VMworld which are open on the Monday. There’s a growing number of people arriving on the Monday who are neither TAM nor PEX attendees, but there’s other conference activities to keep them going too.

Not sure if this was day 0, day -1 or what, but this is where it all begins for a serious percentage of the VMworld attendees that I know. The normal approach for most people who are going to TAM or PEX things on Monday is to get in on Sunday and then head to the vRockstar party.
This year I’d got an early flight out of Gatwick so was in BCN before the shuttle buses started running, but there’s lots of ways to get from the Airport to both the conference site (particularly via the new-for-this-year Fira metro station, which is on L9 Sud along with the airport terminals) and also in to town itself, usually by bus.

I attended my third UK VMUG Conference on the 19th of November (again at the National Motorcycle Museum) an event which is put on by the London VMUG Committee. As planned, I spent the majority of the day in the Community Track, lending my support to all the folks from this amazing community who’d come from near and far to present sessions. What with the vCurry and the vQuiz the night before, which gives folks a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, the UK’s National VMUG conference is always a great event.